THE DICTATORSHIP OF SELF-CHERISHING

Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, The Door to Satisfaction: The Heart Advice of a Tibetan Buddhist Master, foreword by Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, edited by Ailsa Cameron & Robina Courtin (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001) ("The best way to train our mind is to expect the four undesirable objects rather than the four desirable ones. Expect to be criticized and disrespected. This practice of renunciation, which cuts off desire, is the best psychology. Having trained our mind to expect undesirable things, when something undesirable actually happens, it doesn't come as a shock to us; it doesn't hurt, because we are expecting it." "Before knowing about Dharma, before practicing meditation, you regarded discomfort, uninteresting sounds, criticism, and not acquiring things as undesirable problems. Now, if you examine well the nature of the mind that clings to material things, comfort, interesting sounds, praise, you won't find that it is happy; you will see that it too is suffering. It is not the happiness you thought it was before knowing about Dharma. It is not peaceful--it is painful." 'The mind that clings get stuck to the object of desire. When you receive praise--'You are so intelligent,' 'You speak so well,' 'You understand Dharma so well'--your mind get stuck to the praise and is no longer free. Like a body fastened with chains, the mind is fastened with attachment. The mind is tied, controlled, chained by attachment. The mind is stuck like glue to the object. Or like a moth flying into melted candle wax: its whole body, wings, and limbs become completely soaked in candle wax. Its body and libs are so fragile that it is extremely difficult to separate them from the wax. Or like a fly that gets stuck in a spider's web: its limbs get completely wrapped in the web, and it difficult to separate the form it Or like ants in honey. Attachment is the mind stuck to an object." Id. at 61-62. "Self-cherishing is a dictatorship. It is a dictatorship meant to benefit the self but one that results in only problems and failure.  It is not logical. Check, 'Why do I cherish myself? Why do I think that I'm more important than all the numberless other sentient beings? Who do I think I'm so precious? There is not one valid reason for self-cherishing. Though we can give many reasons why we should cherish others, we cannot find one reason why we should cherish our self." Id. at 118-119.).

"FASHION STARS OUT OF DOG DUNG"

Alexandra David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet, with an Introduction by A. D'Arsonval (first published in 1929 in French as Mystiques et magicien du Thibet; first English translation, 1932) (Escondido, CA: The Book Tree, 2000) (" 'Tell him I have come to ask why he mocked at the crowd seeking the benediction of the Dalai Lama.' 'Puffed up with a sense of their own importance and the importance of what they are doing, Insects fluttering in the dung,' muttered the naljorpa between his teeth. This was vague, but the kind of language one expects from such men. 'And you,' I replied, 'are you free from all defilement?' He laughed noisily. 'He who tries to get out only sinks in deeper. I roll in it like a pig. I digest it and turn it into golden dust, into a brook of pure water. To fashion stars out of dog dung, that is the Great Work!' " Id. at 7. "Sorcery loses much of its prestige when seen by broad daylight and in a crowd." Id. at 49. "I had vaguely imagined that beyond the Himalayas the country would become wild, but now I began to realize that on the contrary I was coming into touch with a truly civilized people." Id. at 83. "Learned monks belonging to poor families may earn their livelihood as teachers, as artists if they are gifted at painting religious pictures, as resident chaplains at the houses of rich lamas or laymen, or by occasionally performing religious ceremonies at householders' homes. Besides these various professions, divination, astrology, drawing horoscopes may be reckoned amongst their sources of income." The lama doctors create very favourable situations for themselves if they show their skills by curing a sufficient number of distinguished people. But even with a smaller amount of success, the medical profession is a lucrative one." "However, the profession which looks the most attractive to many is trade. The great majority of those lamaist monks who are not especially religious minded, become traders. If they lack the money needed to undertake a business of their own, they engage themselves as secretaries, accountants, or even as mere servants of a trader." Transacting business, in a more or less unostentatious way, is to a certain extent allowed in the monasteries. As for those of their members who have a really big business they obtain leave form the authorities of the monastery to ravel with their caravan and open shops or branches wherever they like." "One may think that trade does not fit in very well with religious pursuits, but we must also remember a monk has very seldom chosen his own profession. Most of them are led to the monastery as little boys, and it would be unjust to reproach them for not following a mystic avocation which has never been their own choice." Id. at 107-108. "The followers of the Zen sect in Japan, who meditate together in a common hall, appoint a kind of superintendent who is skilled in detecting when a monk is overcome by fatigue. He refreshes the fainting and revives their energy by striking them on one shoulder with a heavy stick. Those who have experienced it agree that the ensuring sensation is a most pleasant relation of the nerves." Id. at 196. Right!).

ARE WESTERNERS PRISONERS OF THEIR MYTHS CONCERNING TIBET AND TIBETAN BUDDHISM AS SHANGRI-LA?

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1998) ("The creation myth of this book began when I attended a conference on Tibet some years ago. The keynote speaker gave a public lecture that romanticized Tibetan history and demonized the Chinese. At the conclusion of the speech the audience rose as one in a standing ovation. It seemed clear that several hundred people had been converted to the cause of Tibetan independence. The question that the lecture raised for me was whether it was possible to make the case for Tibetan independence, which, one assumes, all people of good will (when presented with the facts) would support, without invoking the romantic view of Tibet as Shangri-La. Invoking the myth seems at times almost irresistible; without it the Chinese occupation and colonization of Tibet seems just one of many human rights violations that demand our attention. What sets the plight of Tibet apart from that of Palestine, Rwanda, Burma, Northern Ireland, East Timor, or Bosnia is the picture of Tibetans as a happy, peaceful people devoted to the practice of Buddhism, whose remote and ecologically enlightened land, ruled by a god-king, was invaded by the forces of evil. This is a compelling story, an enticing blends of the exotic, the spiritual, and the political. But I have become convinced that the continued idealization of Tibet--its history and its religion--may ultimately harm the cause of Tibetan independence. I set out to investigate some of the factors that have contributed to the formation and persistence of the romance of Tibet. This book is the result of those investigations." Id. at 11.).

ROMANCING THE BOOK OF THE DEAD

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books) (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2011) ("This book tells the strange story of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It argues that the persistence of its popularity drives from three factors.... The first is the human obsession with death. The second is the Western romance with Tibet. The third is Evans-Wentz's way of making the Tibetan text into something that is somehow American." "T]he work by Walter Evans-Wentz entitled The Tibetan Book of the Dead is not really Tibetan, it is not really a book, and it is not really about death. It is about rebirth: the rebirth of souls and the resurrection of texts. Evan-Wentz's classic is not so much Tibetan as it is American, a product of American Spiritualism. Indeed, it might be counted among its classics.... The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a remarkable case of what can happen when American Spiritualism goes abroad." Id. at 11. "It seems, then, that Evans-Wentz knew what he would find in the Tibetan text before a single word was translated for him. it almost seems that Evans-Wentz's spiritual vacation could have taken him to any Asian country and that he would have produced some version of the book published in 1927. But he chose Tibet, and so the book is The Tibetan Book of the Dead." Id. at 118.).

COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF GOING TO LAW SCHOOL

The most recent number of the Journal of Legal Education (November 2013) contains several articles from a “SYMPOSIUM: IS LAW SCHOOL WORTH IT?”  Good question. No doubt. However, it reminds me of the question “Are children worth it?  For the overwhelming majority of late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century prospective parents the answer is resounding no? A few decades ago. Yale Law School’s John Langbein wrote an article convincingly demonstrating that parents who lose a child (in a wrongful death situation) are, from a strictly economic perspective, better off. It is very, very expensive to raise a child. Children constitute a huge opportunity cost. There are tremendous savings in not needing to spend on a child. But the point, for most who think about it, is that it is not economic loss that the parents’ suffer, it is something else that cannot be measured in dollars and cents, something that defies cost-benefit  economic analysis. I will leave it  to you to define what that something else is. Not to compare a foregone legal education to the loss of a child, but perhaps, just perhaps, the important value of a legal education is something more than a job and earning capacity. It is a sad state of affairs when men and women are reduced to being simply economic man and economic woman. It is a sad state of legal education when what were students are no longer free to explore different intellectual paths because it is all about get a job, get a salary. Sad, pathetic and boring. But worse yet, not in the best interest of the legal profession. Not in the best interest of society. Shakespeare scribbled, “First we kill all the lawyers.” Well, the lawyers are not being killed off. But they are being made into intellectual zombies. The living, but intellectual dead.

ELITE WOMAN ARE DIFFERENT FFROM OTHER WOMEN

Alison Wolf, THE XX Factor: How the Rise of Working Women Has Created a Far Less Equal World (New York: Crown Publishing, 2013) (What is unfortunate about the book's subtitle is that many people will read into it an implied "causal" or "blame" link between women and inequality. Wolf is not arguing or suggesting that woman are the cause of, or to be blame for, the inequality. Rather, the book is about the unintended consequences of the quite reasonable decisions that elite women and men have made. From the book jacket: The gender gap is closing. Today, for the first time in history, tens of millions of women are spending more time at the boardroom table than at the kitchen table. These professional women are highly ambitious and highly educated, enjoying the same lifestyle prerogatives as their male counterparts. They are working longer and marrying later--if they marry at all. They are heading Fortune 500 companies and appearing on the covers of Forbes and Businessweek. They represent a special type of working woman--the kind who don't just punch a clock for a paycheck, but derives self-worth and pleasure from wielding professional power." "At the same time that the gender gap is narrowing, the gulf is widening among women themselves. While blockbuster books such as Lean In focus on women in high-pressure jobs, in reality there are four women in traditionally female roles for every Sheryl Sandberg. In this revealing and deeply intelligent book, Alison Wolf examines why more educated women work longer hours, why having children early is a good idea, and how feminism created a less equal world. Her idea are sure to provoke and surprise as she challenges much of what the liberal and conservative media consider to be women's best interest.").

BETTING ON CLIMATE CHANGE: A BET WE BETTER NOT LOSE

Paul Sabin, The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth's Future (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2013) ("Climate change, to the best of our scientific knowledge, is happening, and much of the recent global warming that we have seen appears caused by human actions. And climate change is a significant problem that threatens heavy economic and social costs. The world that humans are creating--with an increased likelihood of more intense storms, prolonged droughts, and profound changes to ecological systems--is not likely to being changes that people will want These are some of the vital insights of environmental scientists like Paul Ehrlich. At the same time, predictions that 'billions of us will die' by the end of the century as a result of climate change or that civilization will collapse reenact the least helpful elements of Ehrlich-style environmentalism." "What often gets lost in the climate debate are the lessons of the clash between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon. There is a serious and significant discussion to be had over what policy actions to take, and when. How much will the impacts of climate change cost, and how urgent is the need for immediate action? There are two dramatically different versions of the future. Should we count on technological innovation and economic growth to help societies meet this new challenge and adapt to change? Or must we cut emissions immediately and transform our societies in a dramatic way? The competing viewpoints echo positions held by Ehrlich and Simon. Both tend to exaggerate the consequences of their oppoents' position: how expensive and disruptive it would be to shift away from fossil fuels, on the one hand, and whether it would be possible for humanity to adapt to a warmer world."  Id. at 225-226. YET! "Neither biology nor economics can substitute for the deeper ethical question: What kind of world do we desire?" Id. at 227.).

READING LITERATURE MAKES US HUMAN

John Sutherland, A Little History of Literature (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2013) ("For most thoughtful people, literature will play a big part in their lives. We learn a lot of things at home, at school, from friends, and from the mouths of people wiser and cleverer than ourselves. But many of the most valuable things we know come from the  literature we have read. If we read well, we find ourselves in a conversational relationship with the most creative minds of our own time and of the past. Time spent reading literature is always time well spent. Let no one tell you otherwise." Id. at 2. "Why read literature? Because it enriches life in ways that nothing else quite can. It makes us more human. And the better we learn to read it, the better it will do that." Id. at 6.).

ARCHITECTUAL DESIGN IN SUPPORT OF THINKING

Jay Pridmore, Tom Rossiter (Photography), & Robert J. Zimmer (Foreword), Building Ideas: An Architectural Guide to the University of Chicago (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2013) ("From the book's jacket: "When William Rainey Harper, the university's first president, decided to build a set of Gothic quadrangles at the heart of campus, he created a visual link to European precursors and made a bold statement about the future of higher education in the United States. Since then the university has regularly commissioned forward-thinking architects to design buildings that expand--or explode--traditional ideals while redefining the contemporary campus." "Building Ideas: An Architectural Guide to the University of Chicago explores the environment that has supported more than a century of exceptional thinkers." From the "Foreword": 'The architecture of the University of Chicago inspires, encourages, and supports the pursuit of knowledge in all its forms, sustaining an innovative, creative,and fearless scholarly community whose impact reaches well beyond the university's." Id. at xx. When one walks onto a university campus, one should be taken, if not overwhelmed, with a sense that important work is being done there. That the university is a special place. One gets that sense on entering the campus of the University of Chicago.  One might not like particular buildings, yet one senses that great things are being thought and done within those buildings.).

REFLECTING ON PROPOSED CHANGES IN LEGAL EDUCATION

THREE CHEERS FOR THE CONNECTICUT LAW TRIBUNE!!!

Editorial: The Law School Crisis And The Rush To Judgment

The Connecticut Law Tribune

October 9, 2013

 

Are we then being prudent when we conclude that the third year of law school is a boring waste of time? Or is it just as reasonable to argue that the third year provides an opportunity a law student will never again have to hone her skills.

It was probably inevitable. As more and more students graduated from law school with crippling debt and meager job prospects following the Great Recession, the drumbeat for reform grew louder and louder. Soon the examination and scrutiny of contemporary legal education turned from mere criticism into a wholesale assault and then into ugly charges of unwarranted over-pricing and even fraud.

The expected return on investment could not possibly justify the cost of a three-year J.D. program — now $75,000 per year at some schools — the critics argued. Would-be law school applicants apparently agreed, because the past few years have seen a startling decrease in applications, with 2013 showing a 13 percent drop nationally over the preceding year and second- and third-tier law schools experiencing an even steeper decline.

So the experts have come forward and opened the floodgates of restructuring with proposals to cure the systemic problems allegedly corrupting our legal education system, including:

• Reducing the traditional three-year curriculum to two years; a proposal supported even by President Barack Obama in a recent speech.

• If not eliminating the third year of law school, then at least replacing it with internships or clerkships.

• And if neither of those approaches can be embraced, then devoting the third year to clinical courses only, so that new graduates would have some idea of what really happens in a law practice as opposed to a law library.

But those ideas were hardly new and profound. Indeed, a study of legal education funded by the Ford Foundation in 1970 concluded that the third year of legal study was an unnecessary expenditure of time and money, and law firm managing partners have long been loudly complaining that rookie associates come to them filled with legal theory and devoid of practical legal knowledge.

So the legal pundits, and the law school deans, and the other experts started promulgating new and different solutions to the perceived general unhappiness with the current state of legal education. "Three and Three" programs began to spring up at universities with law schools, wherein participants fulfill their core requirements of their selected undergraduate major in three years — instead of the usual four — and then use their first-year law school courses as the electives necessary to complete their undergraduate degree requirements. At the end of six years — instead of seven — they have a bachelor's and J.D. degree. Of course, those proceeding in this manner have virtually no room for electives, or year abroad studies or, perhaps, most importantly, some time off to work and gain real-life experience before undertaking the rigors of law school. Nonetheless, some two dozen law schools now offer such a program.

Others have advocated for the greater use of "reading the law" approach, which is still permitted in several states but which is utilized in only insignificant numbers. The corollary of that argument, of course, is the adoption of that process by more states.

Perhaps the most dramatic proposals for change have come from — of all places — the American Bar Association's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar. At its meeting this past August, that accreditation group focused on ways to reduce the cost of law school tuition. They recommended, among other things, eliminating the tenure requirements for faculty and deans; permitting students to take up to 15 credit hours online; and reducing the full-time faculty-to-student ratio.

Not to be outdone, the ABA's Task Force on the Future of Legal Education recently issued its "Working Paper," in which it comprehensively addressed all the aspects of the controversy surrounding law schools and made recommendations, which, if adopted, would result in a sea change in legal education, including:

• Continuous reassessment of our system of legal education by a standing commission "with appropriate expertise . . . regarding law school pricing and financing."

• Revision of accreditation requirements that are not "contributing commensurately . . . to the goal of ensuring that law schools deliver a quality education, . . ." including those relating to "distance education," student-faculty ratios, full-time faculty, tenure, etc.

• Revision (or elimination) of law school accreditation requirements that "directly or indirectly impede law school innovation in delivering a J.D. education, . . ." This includes requiring a dean to be a tenured faculty member; requiring a fixed minimum number of hours of attendance in regularly scheduled class seminars; and requiring minimum standards for library directors.

• The development of educational programs at the university level to prepare persons other than prospective lawyers to provide limited legal services.

In the face of this unprecedented turmoil in what was heretofore a largely unchanging industry, we call for a time out, a deep breath, and a step back. Structural changes — especially in an institution so important to our societal good — should never be made in an atmosphere of frustration, anger, defensiveness and chaos, which is clearly what now prevails with respect to legal education. Worse yet, it is a panic driven by what may very well be faulty assumptions.

A recent study by Professors Michael Simkovic and Frank McIntyre examines the statistics claiming to support the argument that a law degree makes no economic sense and completely debunks them, demonstrating instead that a law degree does, in fact, result in the holder realizing very significant increases in income over her working life, which makes legal education a very worthwhile investment.

While law school tuition has increased in the past decade at a rate far greater than inflation or even tuition increases at other professional graduate schools, and although efforts must continue and intensify to find ways to control that disturbing and intolerable phenomenon, the increases, until the recession took its toll on Big Law, were largely matched by starting salary increases. Perhaps an adjustment period is required to put that back in balance, so that tuition increases are again aligned with jumps in starting salary levels.

Moreover, the current attack on law schools is predicated in large part on the very painful disconnect between cost and reward caused by the dismal job market now prevailing. The critics assume that this is the "new normal," so law schools must change to accommodate it. This may be a permanent change in the demand for new lawyers, or it may not be. Five years is simply not enough time to determine that. We have seen economic downturns adversely affect our profession before this one hit, and we have bounced back from those.

The ABA Working Paper speaks of the "private good" inherent in legal education and the "public good." The latter is important to the well-being of any society predicated on the rule of law, because the legal education system produces the lawyers, judges, prosecutors, public defenders, academicians, and legal thinkers who have made our civil and criminal justice systems the envy of most civilized nations. We undertake its dismantling and re-building, therefore, at great risk.

In addition, law schools put forth, for the most part, brilliant faculty members with outstanding pedagogical skills, who provide a unique and high quality learning experience and turn out well educated lawyers. Can we be sure that will remain so if we eliminate tenure and full-time faculty minimum levels?

Finally, we simply cannot ignore what has not been, for some reason, part of the discussion. Since the "reading law" system was largely abandoned a century ago, our system of legal education has produced hundreds of thousands of outstanding lawyers, who have well served both the private and public sectors. In short, for the most part, it works.

Are we then being prudent when we conclude — with absolutely no supporting empirical evidence — that the third year is a boring waste of time? Or is it just as reasonable to argue that the third year provides an opportunity a law student will never again have to hone her skills; take courses in areas where he has a special interest — even a passion; participate in clinical programs; or just take another year to mature into a lawyer with the skills and ethics our profession needs?

Are we really advancing the "public good" interest in legal education when we replace with "distance learning" the invaluable and intellectually challenging give and take with the professor and fellow students in a seminar class? Are we moving in the right direction when we completely replace the hard core, traditional third year courses with "practical experience," so as to placate the law firms that have concluded they are entitled to "ready to work" associates?

Let us look hard, very hard, at the precious societal asset that is our legal education system before we start tearing it apart.

Read more: http://www.ctlawtribune.com/PubArticleCT.jsp?id=1202622884976&thepage=3#ixzz2hPvGNSeJ

CAN AMERICANS THINK OF THEMSELVES AS PART OF A CIVILIZATION

Drew Maciag, Edmund Burke in America: The Contested Career of the Father of Modern Conservatism (Ithaca & London: Cornell U. Press, 2013) ("Today ignorance of history is one of society's chief maladies. Another is the increasing unwillingness of individual Americans to think in terms of belonging to a civilization, not just to an interest group, a religious or sexual persuasion, a regional identity, a racial or ethnic hyphenate, and ideological camp, a lifestyle category, a generational cohort, an economic class, a vocational specialty, or a cultural profile--all of which are consciously intended to divide persons into incompatible subsets. A great nation's goal should be the preservation and advancement of a civilization that is pluralistically dynamic yet cohesive enough to instill a common sense of purpose. Instead, America's current impulse toward fragmentation seems to be yielding not civilization, but a polycentric society that is incapable of finding common ground or agreeing on common goals." Id. at 239. "Even before the terms themselves came into general use, their generic profiles were evident. In ideal (almost impressionistic) forms: Conservatism houses a general preference for order, stability, hierarchy, religious orthodoxy, institutional authority, social conformity, property rights, discipline, and established cultural standards. Liberalism houses a general preference for innovation, progress, fairness, reform, democracy, equality, equity, humanitarianism, flexibility, tolerance, personal fulfillment, and experimentation. Each of these constituent values is itself open to interpretation, and not every value applies (or applies with equal weight) to all conservatives or to all liberals; moreover, conservative-liberal distinctions are usually drawn by de-emphasizing opposing values, rather than by rejecting them outright. Still, these two alternative value systems--whether functioning as clear ideologies or as diffuse sensibilities--have driven the core disputes of American political thinking for over two centuries." Id. at xii.).

WHEN WE ALL THINK ALIKE, THEN NO ONE IS THINKING. - Walter Lippman

I find myself increasing uninterested in people. Perhaps I am a misanthrope. Or, perhaps, it is because, in recent years, I have seldom encountered a person who thinks for himself or herself. I don't mean persons having original thoughts, for true original is extremely rare. It is very hard to have a truly original thought; the odds are stacked against it. And I don't mean persons merely with opinions. There is a lot of opinion, most of it thoughtless opinion, out there. What I mean is someone who is committed to ideas and, more importantly, committed to critically assessing ideas. Good critical thinkers. I cannot help believing such people are out there, somewhere. But I seem to live in a zip code called conformity. I need to move.

UNPUNISHED CRIMES COMMITTED IN ORDINARY LIFE

Javier Marias, The Infatuations: A Novel, translation from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (New York: Knopf, 2012, 2013) ("As I said, I cared nothing for justice or injustice. What business were they of mine, for of Diaz-Varela had been right about one thing, as had the lawyer Derville in his fictional world and in his time that does not pass and stays quite still. it was this: 'Far more crimes go unpunished then punished, not to speak of those we know nothing about or that remain hidden, for there must inevitably be more hidden crimes than crimes that are known about and recorded.' And perhaps also when he said: 'The worst thing is that so many disparate individuals in every age and every country, each on his own account and at his own risk, and not, in principle, subject to mutual contagion, separated from each other by kilometres or years or centuries, each with his own thoughts and particular aims, should all choose the same methods of robbery, deception, murder or betrayal against the friends, colleagues, brothers, sisters, parents, children, husbands, wives or lovers whom they once loved the most. Crimes committed in ordinary life are more scattered, more spaced out, one here, another there; and because they only trickle into our consciousness, they cause less outrage and tend not to provoke waves of protest, however incessantly they occur: how could it be any other way, given that society lives alongside them and has been impregnated with their very nature since time immemorial.'" Id. at 334-335.).

ADDICTION AND FAMILY

Nick Flynn, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (New York: Norton, 2004) ("The Zen master tells me that my body is the communication of my father's body. This is a hard fact, he says. By now I've already spent countless hours in twelve-step meetings, perched on a folding chair, listening to sorry-assed people tell sorry-assed tales in one church basement after another. I've heard of a pilot talk about waking up in Paris, not remembering he had flown himself and three hundred passengers in the night before. I've befriended a guy who poured gasoline on his hand and lit it, just to get the morphine. It takes a year to realize I am no different form anyone else. The Zen master says that if I can understand the nature of my body I will understand the cosmos--this is one promise of Buddhism. Unfortunately, I learn, the path to understanding is through my father's body, which, it seems, is my body, inescapably. To be caught in a notion of self is bad. To be caught in a notion of nonself is worse. I saw him sleeping in the sun on a bench on the Esplanade, He  rose and staggered to the edge of the river to piss. Jesus said, Forgive! Buddha said, Awaken! The first warm day of spring, families out for a Sunday stroll. I watch them watch him, saw how they steered clear. That fucking little girl." Id. at 292-293.).

IF ONLY ONE COULD GET LAW STUDENTS, LAW PROFESSOR AND LAWYERS TO READ LITERARY FICTION

 NEW YORK TIMESOCTOBER 3, 2013, 2:15 PM 77 Comments

For Better Social Skills, Scientists Recommend a Little Chekhov

By PAM BELLUCK

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Casey Kelbaugh for The New York TimesEmanuele Castano, left, and David Comer Kidd, researchers in the New School for Social Research’s psychology department, worked on a study that found that reading literary fiction leads to better performance on tests of social perception.

Say you are getting ready for a blind date or a job interview. What should you do? Besides shower and shave, of course, it turns out you should read — but not just anything. Something by Chekhov or Alice Munro will help you navigate new social territory better than a potboiler by Danielle Steel.

That is the conclusion of a study published Thursday in the journal Science. It found that after reading literary fiction, as opposed to popular fiction or serious nonfiction, people performed better on tests measuring empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence — skills that come in especially handy when you are trying to read someone’s body language or gauge what they might be thinking.

The 5-Minute Empathy Workout

Curious to see how you do on a test of emotional perception?

• Take our quiz.
• Reading selections in the study.

The researchers say the reason is that literary fiction often leaves more to the imagination, encouraging readers to make inferences about characters and be sensitive to emotional nuance and complexity.

“This is why I love science,” Louise Erdrich, whose novel “The Round House” was used in one of the experiments, wrote in an e-mail. The researchers, she said, “found a way to prove true the intangible benefits of literary fiction.”

“Thank God the research didn’t find that novels increased tooth decay or blocked up your arteries,” she added.

The researchers, social psychologists at the New School for Social Research in New York City, recruited their subjects through that über-purveyor of reading material, Amazon.com. To find a broader pool of participants than the usual college students, they used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, where people sign up to earn money for completing small jobs.

People ranging in age from 18 to 75 were recruited for each of five experiments. They were paid $2 or $3 each to read for a few minutes. Some were given excerpts from award-winning literary fiction (Don DeLillo, Wendell Berry). Others were given best sellers like Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl,” a Rosamunde Pilcher romance or a Robert Heinlein science fiction tale.

In one experiment, some participants were given nonfiction excerpts, but we’re not talking “All the President’s Men.” To maximize the contrast, the researchers — looking for nonfiction that was well-written, but not literary or about people — turned to Smithsonian Magazine. “How the Potato Changed the World” was one selection. “Bamboo Steps Up” was another.

After reading — or in some cases reading nothing — the participants took computerized tests that measure people’s ability to decode emotions or predict a person’s expectations or beliefs in a particular scenario. In one test, called “Reading the Mind in the Eyes,” subjects did just that: they studied 36 photographs of pairs of eyes and chose which of four adjectives best described the emotion each showed.

Is the woman with the smoky eyes aghast or doubtful? Is the man whose gaze has slivered to a squint suspicious or indecisive? Is she interested or irritated, flirtatious or hostile? Is he fantasizing or guilty, dominant or horrified? Or annoyed that his tech stock dropped half a percent on the Nasdaq in a round of late trading after news from the Middle East? (Just kidding — that last one isn’t on the test.)

The idea that what we read might influence our social and emotional skills is not new. Previous studies have correlated various types of reading with empathy and sensitivity. More recently, in a field called “theory of mind,” scientists have used emotional intelligence perception tests to study, for example, children with autism.

But psychologists and other experts said the new study was powerful because it suggested a direct effect — quantifiable by measuring how many right and wrong answers people got on the tests — from reading literature for only a few minutes.

“It’s a really important result,” said Nicholas Humphrey, an evolutionary psychologist who has written extensively about human intelligence, and who was not involved in the research. “That they would have subjects read for three to five minutes and that they would get these results is astonishing.”

Dr. Humphrey, an emeritus professor at Cambridge University’s Darwin College, said he would have expected that reading generally would make people more empathetic and understanding. “But to separate off literary fiction, and to demonstrate that it has different effects from the other forms of reading, is remarkable,” he said.

Experts said the results implied that people could be primed for social skills like empathy, just as watching a clip from a sad movie can make one feel more emotional.

“This really nails down the causal direction,” said Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto who was not involved in the study. “These people have done not one experiment but five, and they have found the same effects.”

The researchers — Emanuele Castano, a psychology professor, and David Comer Kidd, ? a doctoral candidate — found that people who read literary fiction scored better than those who read popular fiction. This was true even though, when asked, subjects said they did not enjoy literary fiction as much. Literary fiction readers also scored better than nonfiction readers — and popular fiction readers made as many mistakes as people who read nothing.

There is much the study does not address: How long could such effects last? Would three months of reading Charles Dickens and Jane Austen produce larger or smaller effects, or have no impact? Are the differences in scores all attributable to the type of material read? Would the results hold if the same person read all of the types? And would it matter if the literary fiction was particularly difficult? (Nobody was asked to read James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon.)

The study’s authors and other academic psychologists said such findings should be considered by educators designing curriculums, particularly the Common Core standards adopted by most states, which assign students more nonfiction.

“Frankly, I agree with the study,” said Albert Wendland, who directs a master’s program in writing popular fiction at Seton Hill University. “Reading sensitive and lengthy explorations of people’s lives, that kind of fiction is literally putting yourself into another person’s position — lives that could be more difficult, more complex, more than what you might be used to in popular fiction. It makes sense that they will find that, yeah, that can lead to more empathy and understanding of other lives.”

He added: “Maybe popular fiction is a way of dealing more with one’s own self, maybe, with one’s own wants, desires, needs.”
In popular fiction, said Mr. Kidd, one of the researchers, “really the author is in control, and the reader has a more passive role.”

In literary fiction, like Dostoyevsky, “there is no single, overarching authorial voice,” he said. “Each character presents a different version of reality, and they aren’t necessarily reliable. You have to participate as a reader in this dialectic, which is really something you have to do in real life.”

Dr. Castano added that, in many cases, “popular fiction seems to be more focused on the plot.”

“Characters can be interchangeable and usually more stereotypical in the way they are described,” he said.

Ms. Erdrich, the author, said the study made her feel “personally cheered.”

“Writers are often lonely obsessives, especially the literary ones. It’s nice to be told what we write is of social value,” she said. “However, I would still write even if novels were useless.”

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Want to help the researchers with their work? You can participate.

PUBLIC CREDIT AND THE GROWTH OF THE MILITARY-FISCAL STATE

J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: Volume One: The Enlightenment of Edward Gibbon, 1737-1764 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1999).

J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: Volume Two: Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1999).

J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: Volume Three: The First Decline and Fall (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2003) ("Early in he seventeenth century, Francis Bacon had proposed that three technological inventions had transformed human history about the year 1500: the compass, the printing press, and gunpowder. About 1700, it began to be perceived that history was being again transformed by a new series of inventions, of which two that here concern us were social rather than technological in character; the third, the new philosophy of Locke and Newton, was a separate if more universally important phenomenon. The two were the standing army and public credit. The first--the acquisition by the state of the means of paying and maintaining an army year after year--transformed not only the nature of warfare but the nature of the state itself, giving it an effective monopoly of the means of violence. The standing army, regularly paid out of the state's fiscal resources, was professional, an arm of the state proper, whereas its immediate predecessor, raised by short-term contracts on which the state regularly defaulted, was mercenary; the former was unlikely to intervene in the government of the state, but gave the state new and alarming power over its citizens. It had been the strength of Harrington's politico-historical perception that he saw that a state lacking such fiscal resources was dependent on an army that could live of its own, but his weakness that he greatly underestimated the state's ability to acquire such resources. Premising that a bank could never pay an army, he had imagined the New Model as a body of armed proprietors--which it was not--and had constructed a Gracchan history of Europe, in which the free military colonists of the republic had become the stipendiated but unreliable legions of the principate, and had been replaced by the feudal colonies of the Goths, out of whose unbalanced system a free people in arms had emerged in England, as an unintended consequence of Tudor legislation. His scheme could be modified, but not replace, by the supposition that the Gothic model had included freemen in arms, living by tenures rather allodial than feudal." "It was the invention of public credit that destroyed the Harringtonian account of history. Many banks, both national and diasporic, took part in it; but a major effect upon Britain of the Dutch invasion of 1688 and the enlistment of England and Scotland in the Dutch resistance to France was the erection of the Bank of England to which the Revolution regime pledged its credit, and the consequent growth of the 'military-fiscal state' that enabled the Kingdom of Great Britain to challenge both the French and the Dutch for hegemony in both Europe and Europe's oceanic empires. The Enlightened vision of a European republic of states was the expression of a temporary equilibrium in this contest for imperium; it came to an end a century later, when the burden of public debt to pay for wars of empire grew too great for some of the contending states to bear. Meanwhile, however, what were the effects of the new military-fiscal order upon the individual as proprietor, subject and freeman? The state's possession of a standing army went far towards eliminating any possibility of a civil or religious war in which he might have to draw the sword himself. Notably in England, where such a war was a nightmare not far from recurring, this assurance was heartily welcomed and it freed the individual to take part in all the rich diversity of commerce, manners and civil society offered him by what we are calling Enlightenment. But by laying aside the sword, as Hobbes had abjured him to do, he was laying aside the ultima ratio he had once possessed for determining what the state might or might not do, in peace and war. Machiavelli had located this freedom in the Roman plebs, so long as they retained the arms which made them necessary to the republic's armies and this is why Roman history remained of importance to Europe in the age of Enlightenment and the standing army. The new state of Great Britain, where civil war was a vivid and highly politicalised memory but military strength in the state a new experience, furnished an ideological theatre in which these issues were contended for in detail." Id. at 310-311.).

J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: Volume Four: Barbarians, Savages and Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2005).

J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: Volume Five: Religion: The First Triumph (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2010).

WILL CHINA LEARN FROM AFGHANISTAN HISTORY WHAT THE BRITISH, RUSSIANS AND THE AMERICANS DID NOT?

William Dalrymple, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42 (New York: Knopf, 2013) ("At the end of Kim, Kipling has his eponymous hero say, 'When everyone is dead, the Great Game is finished. Not Before.' In the 1980s it was the Russians' withdrawal from their failed occupation of Afghanistan that triggered the beginning of the end of he Soviet Union. Less than twenty years later, in 2001, British and American troops arrived in Afghanistan, where they proceeded to begin losing what was, in Britain's case, its fourth war in that country. As before, in the end, despite all the billions of dollars handed out, the training of an entire army of Afghan troops and the infinitely superior weaponry of the occupiers, the Afghan resistance succeeded again in first surrounding then propelling the hated Kafirs into a humiliating exist. In both cases the occupying troops lost the will to continue fighting at such cost and with so little gain." Id. at 430-431. "'These are the last days of the Americans,' said the other elder. 'Next it will be China.'" Id. at 435.).

ON LONELINESS AND TECHNOLOGIES

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Communicating (New York: Harper One, 2013) ("Loneliness is the suffering of our time. Even if we're surrounded by others, we can feel very alone. We are lonely together. There's a vacuum inside us. It makes us feel uncomfortable, so we try to fill it up by connecting with other people. We believe that if we're able to connect, the feeling of loneliness will disappear." "Technology supplies us with many devices to help us stay connected. But even when we're connected, we continue to feel lonely. We check our e-mail, send text messages, and post updates several times a day. We want to share and receive. We might spend our whole day connecting but not reduce the loneliness we feel." "We all hunger for love, but we don't know how to generate love in order to feed ourselves with it. When we're empty, we use technology to try to dissipate the feeling of loneliness, but it doesn't work. We have the Internet, e-mail, video conferencing, texting and posting. apps, letters, and cell phones. We have everything. And yet it's not at all certain that we have improved our communication..." "We believe too much in the technologies of communication. Behind all these instruments we have the mind, the most fundamental instrument for communication. If our minds are blocked, there is no device that will make up for tour inability to communicate with ourselves or others." Id. at 13-14. As the Beatles sang, 'all the lonely people, where do they all come from?').